John Glaser

January 29, 2014

Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, spoke with Chicago University professor and renowned international relations theorist John Mearsheimer about the apparent shifts in attitudes in both the country and in Washington on foreign policy issues: I would submit two points of caution. First of all, whatever hospitality the broader GOP has afforded more libertarian-leaning […]

John Glaser

January 29, 2014

In last night’s State of the Union speech, President Obama put the spotlight on one of his invited guests, Army Ranger Sgt. 1st Class Cory Remsburg, a severely wounded veteran who was nearly killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Here’s Reason‘s Nick Gillespie in Time on why using the wounded vet as a political tool is […]

John Glaser

January 28, 2014

The Obama administration seems to have made a decision long ago on how to deal with Egypt’s rocky, post-Mubarak transition; namely to keep it subtle and in the background. Washington intends to remain a player in Egypt’s strategic position, but as far as the domestic stuff goes, Obama is tight-lipped. That is actually representative of […]

John Glaser

January 28, 2014

Despite my harsh criticisms of the Obama administration’s policies towards the Asia-Pacific, I’m of the opinion that an actual shooting war between the U.S. and China is very unlikely for the foreseeable future. Like the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, real conflict was considered simply too costly to statesmen on both […]

John Glaser

January 28, 2014

One of the hard truths about Washington is that Congress recklessly wastes billions of taxpayer dollars on weapons programs that the Pentagon says it doesn’t want or need. Congress does this to avoid the slight uptick in unemployment in their districts that might result from cutting portions of the defense budget. In other words, defense […]

Ray McGovern

January 27, 2014

In the early 1970s, I was chief of the CIA’s Soviet Foreign Policy Branch in which Robert M. Gates worked as a young CIA analyst. While it may be true that I was too inexperienced at the time to handle all the management challenges of such a high-powered office, one of the things I did […]

John Glaser

January 24, 2014

Pro-Israel commentators have been known to downplay the importance of the Israel lobby here in the U.S. “The lobby” is not as influential, coordinated, sneaky, or nefarious as many of its critics maintain, they insist, while often making accusations of conspiratorial thinking. In a strange, reverse-paranoia article at The Daily Beast, one of these pro-Israel […]

John Glaser

January 23, 2014

An editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post urges President Obama to use the threat of a U.S. bombing campaign to achieve political ends on a transition deal in the Syria talks. Obama “could force” a diplomatic agreement for a transition government in Syria “by presenting Mr. Assad with the choice of accepting them or enduring U.S. […]

John Glaser

January 23, 2014

The NSA’s bulk collection of every American’s telephone call records is illegal, according to the federal government’s independent review panel, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The NSA’s interprets Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which permits the F.B.I. to obtain business records deemed “relevant” to an investigation, as granting it the authority to collect the call […]

Angela Keaton

January 22, 2014

Directly lifted from the Electronic Frontier Foundation blog: January 23, 2014 – 7:30pm Berkeley, CA Join us for “NSA Surveillance and Our ‘Almost Orwellian’ State,” hosted by St. John’s Presbyterian Church on Thursday, January 23, 2014. Address: St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA The event is open to the public. A donation […]